A Life for a Death
by sat-anpu
Summary: This was truly my penitence, the experience of being stabbed, set on fire, and jaded millions of times over and over again, in a symphony of neverending torture and death.  Summary inside; rated T for strong language.


Disclaimer: I do not claim any ownership to Demon's Souls; that means anything related to the concept, original storyline, original characters, etc.

Summary: Did we ever try to breathe life into our characters? I hope we did to some extent. At least, I tried in this story. This is a 1st-person POV of one of my randomly named characters, that I completely made up out of thin air. This story really has no direction, but it's somewhat of an inner monologue of said character. By reading this, I am assuming you have completed Demon's Souls at least once to understand the original story, characters, and whatnot, simply because I will not be explaining any of the concepts.

Rating: Probably varies between T and M, for language and violence.

Author's Note 1: I planned on continuing this out of sheer boredom. I haven't written anything interesting in a while and summer time is usually the time for me to do lots of thinking. There may be some typos in here because I didn't bother proofreading, so if you're a grammar nazi, take it elsewhere. I apologize if this is rather boring or confusing. The first chapter just jumps right in with little explanation so hopefully it will encourage you to keep reading on. I want to know if this is worth continuing or abandoning, ie if this should be a one-shot or a small series. Don't expect for me to give a thorough background story to my character, because this was what chapter 1 was for. Go forth and enjoy, leave a review (will not accept flames; if you find something wrong, state so constructively and don't be a smart ass), then await the birth of Dark Souls.

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><p><span>Chapter 1<span>

"And at once he who had been dead came forth…" -John 11:4, Challoner-Rheims Revision

My mother hated my face, my complexion, my obscurity. Blue eyes and wavy black hair did not make me beautiful, she said to me when I was a little girl. One day my little brother gave me a "toy," which he stole from a blacksmith's boy in the rat-infested pits of the Boletarian Palace Town. I was too young, too stupid, to realize the "toy" my brother had brought me turned out to be an iron knobbed-mace, about 2 feet long; lightweight, yet powerful enough to kill someone if placed in trained hands.

"You look like a boy with that!" Ardicus, my brother, also made fun of me, said I was too ugly to be a girl. He told me not to show mommy the new toy he gave me, so I hid it in a large wooden chest that father brought home from one of his warring expeditions in the east. It was beautiful, ornately carved and foreign, yet mommy thought it was too ugly. The thing sat abandoned in our storage area for many years, father having lost interest in it the moment he brought it home to our small manor…a perfect place to hide something of mine.

When I wasn't busy being forced to sew, cook, or watch over my baby sister, Fede, I snuck into the storage room and pretended to whack things with my new toy. Sometimes Ardicus would sneak up on me and scare me to death, threatening to tell mommy about my new weapon, despite the fact he brought it home to me. I snapped right back at him whenever he threatened, erupting into a large argument, telling him I would just tell mommy he stole the damn thing from a poor black smith in the slums. Fede would usually start crying, the 2 year old not understanding why her two older siblings were arguing with each other.

One day Ardicus grabbed my hand, pushed me against my bedroom wall. I wanted to start crying but he silenced my scream by stressing his hand over my mouth. Mommy was gone for the day, dawdling with other noblewomen in the Palace gardens. Fede was taking a nap. "We hate mommy," Ardicus told me then, manipulative and jittery. "Take the new toy and bop mommy on the head when she's sleeping." He let go of me then. I was confused, unsure of how to respond.

"Why?" I asked. Ardicus pushed me again, this time with less "shove" in it. It was almost like he was mocking me. "So she can sleep permanently!" he screeched into my face. I covered my ears. At the time, I didn't think it was exactly "killing" my mother. When I later "bopped" her, I did it a little too hard. There was no scream from her. Her face almost melted inward, part of her facial area completely crushed. Too afraid to realize what the hell I had just done, I ran out of the bedroom, hoping to leave my father's old estate. Instead, one of the servants grabbed me and beat me to the point of unconsciousness. I don't know what happened in that instant, and I never will. All I remember was that I woke up in a slave market in the southern wastes of Boletaria. No clue how I ended up there or how I got there, or how much time lapsed.

Now that I think about it, the whole thing may have been father's doing. At that time I wished I could have killed him too. He would often sleep and fuck prostitutes when mommy was out in the country with her sister. Father told us if we ever told mommy about what he did, he would cut our throats while we were sleeping. Boletarian noble families were total disasters, wearing the mask of intrigue at court. But when it came right down to going home, beating wives, whoring, child abuse, and carousing were favorite past times of the nobility.

I was sold to a religious order, of some unknown name. Apparently at the time, the monarchy wanted young children to train as "priests," in this case, crusaders. They wanted us to fight the barbarians in the north; the east was done and over with nearly a decade ago. Crusaders were mostly former mercenaries, penitents, or enslaved fodder. In this case, I belonged to the enslaved fodder. Taking slaves as crusaders was fairly rare, so I heard.

When a crusader captain, named Endelorde, saw my track record he was all too happy to "recruit" me for his small legion of crusaders. He was an older man, tall, with a sharpened nose, and unattractive. The first time he asked my name, I refused to answer him.

"Look girl." He pulled me, in a similar manner that Ardicus used to do. "I'll be nice to you just this once. If you won't tell me your name, then I'll give you one. You better get on your damned knees and pray to God for forgiveness…That's right, I'll give you a penitent's name." Endelorde released my hand, yet I didn't dare to run away. This man was obviously a thinker.

"Elspeth sounds delightful for a little girl like you. Like your new name, Elspeth? You better, because if you don't, I'll give you a whore's name and all the men will call you a whore. Some of the mercenaries might fuck you if you have a whore's name. We can't have undisciplined crusaders now, can we?"

All this came back to me the moment I was resurrected in the Nexus, for the first time ever. This was the first death and the first rebirth, the first of a thousand more deaths to come. I had wandered into the damn fog, did what I was supposed to do, and ended up here, at this great rift between worlds.

Explanations would come later. Right now, I started to regret what I had gotten myself into. This was truly my penitence, the experience of being stabbed, set on fire, and jaded millions of times over and over again, in a symphony of neverending torture and death. This was eternal enslavement, to do the bidding of the Monumental and put the Old One back into his slumber.

Death never ended, it only began again. This was truly hell times infinity, of the thought of coming back to this rift and starting all over again from the beginning. Other humans had survived, but were trapped in the Nexus like me. They were lucky; they didn't have to go to the Archstones and die endlessly.

It's all just a dream, I keep telling myself. Someday I will awaken from this nightmare, and when that day comes, I will wish that I was permanently dead.


End file.
